Antwone Fisher (122 mins, 15) Directed by Denzel Washington; starring Derek Luke, Joy Bryant, Salli Richardson
Secretary (104 mins, 18) Directed by Steven Shainberg; starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Jeremy Davies
The Actors (95 mins, 15) Directed by Conor McPherson; starring Michael Caine, Dylan Moran, Michael Gambon
The Truth About Charlie (104 mins, 12A) Directed by Jonathan Demme; starring Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins, Mark Wahlberg
Kangaroo Jack (89 mins, PG) Directed by David McNally; starring Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Christopher Walken
Mostly Martha (106 mins, PG) Directed by Sandra Nettelbeck; starring Martina Gedeck, Maxine Foerste, Sergio Castellitto
Extreme Ops (93 mins, 12A) Directed by Christian Duguay; starring Rufus Sewell, Rupert Graves, Bridgette Wilson- Sampras
The Happiness of the Katakuris (113 mins, 15) Directed by Miike Takashi; starring Kenji Sawada, Keiko Matsuzaka
In the Name of Buddha (146 mins, 18) Directed by Rajesh Touchriver; starring Shiju, Sonija, Jyothi Lai
Denzel Washington's directorial debut, Antwone Fisher, begins with a series of romantic shots of a little black boy up to his neck in corn. This is intended to be an idyllic dream, but it turns out to be an unintentional metaphor for every sentimentalised, cliché-ridden situation the eponymous hero gets into throughout the movie. Written by Antwone Fisher himself and 'inspired' by his autobiography, the film tells the story of how, in a matter of weeks, he was turned from an aggressive, deeply disturbed young sailor on the point of discharge into a well-adjusted mature man, through a few sessions with a sympathetic naval psychiatrist.
He was born in prison to a neglectful mother, his father was murdered by an ex-girlfriend when Antwone was a baby and he was reared by a cruel stepmother and sexually abused as a child by her daughter. Pushed out of an orphanage as a teenager, he saw his best friend killed while robbing a convenience store and joined the US navy. The saintly shrink (Washington) becomes a surrogate father to the surly Antwone (Derek Luke). He gives him self-esteem and directs him towards a search for his lost family. The movie is glib and as slow-moving as bank holiday traffic. Fisher cannot resist that favourite Hollywood exchange: 'I love you son' - 'I love you too'. But it's surprising that Washington did not cut his final speech - 'Because of you Antwone, I'm a better man and a better doctor. I don't owe you anything. I salute you'.
Steven Shainberg's Secretary, winner of numerous festival awards, is a comical case history of sado-masochism. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a middle-class woman released from a mental hospital where she has been treated for self-mutilation. Escaping her dysfunctional family, she finds salvation as secretary to a deranged, twitching lawyer (James Spader, no stranger to this kind of movie). He insists on her using a manual typewriter, spanks her violently when she makes a typing error, masturbates over her and makes her submit to various forms of humiliation. She loves it. After losing her virginity to her simple-minded boyfriend, he asks: 'I didn't hurt you, did I?' 'No,' she replies sadly. The film is often amusing and its theme seems to be the banality and normality of perversity.
Conor McPherson's directorial debut, The Actors, is one of three movies this week in which thugs pursue more-or-less innocent people to recover large chunks of loot that has gone astray. Michael Caine plays a clapped-out thespian appearing in a ludicrous Third Reich version of Richard III in Dublin who inveigles a young actor (the likeable Dylan Moran) into a money-making scam. This involves the lad imitating an Irishman, a Scotsman and a cockney to obtain £50,000 that a thick Irish crook (Michael Gambon) owes to a London mob. There is a lot of talent behind and in front of the camera, but nothing worth watching has got up there on the screen. It's more Farewell My Luvvies than The Italian Job.
In Jonathan Demme's comedy thriller The Truth about Charlie a menacing gang of ex-special service soldiers threaten a young English widow in Paris. Her late husband has run away with several million pounds worth of diamonds that should have been shared with them and they wrongly believe she knows where the gems are stashed. This messy film is a misguided re-make of Stanley Donen's enjoyable 1963 Hitchcock pastiche, Charade. Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau and Cary Grant are replaced in ascending order of inadequacy by Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins and Mark Wahlberg. The original's memorable climax set in the Paris Opera has been turned into a talkative protracted standoff in the pouring rain. Because Charade was made in the early Sixties, Demme has decided to make the film into a homage to the French New Wave, which means adopting a frenetic visual style and giving walk-on parts to Charles Aznavour (plus a clip from Shoot the Pianist ), Anna Karina and Agnès Varda, and having the heroine stay at the Hotel Langlois.
The money in Kangaroo Jack belongs to a Brooklyn mafia capo and two of his dim minions are entrusted to deliver it to an Australian hit man near Alice Springs. Accidentally they leave it in the pocket of a bowling jacket they put on a fugitive kangaroo. Accompanied by a female conservationist, they pursue the prancing creature across the outback on farting camels, with two gangs of deadly criminals on their tail. It's a dopey, witless movie, with sentimental reflections on friendship and embarrassing homophobic jokes. The great Bill Hunter as a boozy bush pilot does his best with a hackneyed role.
Sandra Nettelbeck's Mostly Martha is a charming, lightweight German comedy centring on Martha (Martina Gedeck), an ace chef at a prestigious Hamburg restaurant whose food-centred, carefully organised single life is suddenly disrupted. First, her sister dies and she has to take in a troubled eight-year-old niece. Then her dominance in the kitchen is challenged by a new sous-chef, a brilliant, easygoing, disorderly Italian (Sergio Castellitto). There are few surprises, but the characters are engaging and it is a change from the junk food of most current films. Gedeck is a dead ringer for Helen Hunt, who will probably star in the Hollywood remake.
In the thriller Extreme Ops, a team of extreme sports devotees and stunt people are making a dangerous TV commercial at an Austrian ski resort when they stumble across a ruthless Serbian war criminal and his henchman in flight from the law. The plotting is perfunctory, the characters from stock and the good guys only slightly less unattractive than the villains. Rupert Graves affects an American accent as a reckless producer.
The most inscrutably pointless picture of the year so far, The Happiness of the Katakuris (directed by the prolific Miike Takashi, best known for The Audition ) is a musical comedy about a family of Japanese weirdos running a rural hotel where the hapless guests invariably end up buried in the surrounding fields. One victim poses as an American naval officer who claims to be the nephew of Queen Elizabeth. The numerous jaunty numbers sound like Andorra or Liechtenstein entries for the Eurovision Song Contest.
The long, well-meaning In the Name of the Buddha is an incoherent, inept, extremely bloody lament for the Tamils murdered, mutilated and raped by the Sri Lankan army and the Indian peacekeeping forces in the 1980s. The narrator is a Tamil asylum-seeker telling his story to a weeping immigration official at Heathrow who, while granting him a visa, reveals by the numbers tattooed on her arm that she's a Holocaust survivor. Shameless.
